Brandon C. Smith Memoirs

Artist statement, 2007

2012-01-20T22:25:00.001-08:00

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

-- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

The visitors

This artist’s statement was written to support of the first gallery show I participated in. That show focused on light paintings made by Peter Anger and myself over about a year’s time.

Collaborative Light Painting

Davis Gallery, Stephen's College, September 2007

I see a portrait whenever my eyes are open and my spirit is alive: not a flat, stiff, frozen image, but a living breathing aliveness. A lake, a mountain, a tree, a flower, a kitty cat, even people, all have spirit, all breathe, all deserve just a bit more than a snapshot. My photographic images are my way of writing with light, drawing the portraits of the life, spirit, beauty and truth who so often sit calmly waiting for us to notice them.

My desire to write with light started when I was nine years old, when I stepped off a plane in Djakarta, Indonesia, just after the dry season's normal 3pm rain. The sky was an intense blue, the sun bright clear and close, and the surrounding forest was an intense green, and everywhere I looked I saw diamonds glittering. The diamonds were the raindrops glistening in those few moments of life before evaporation would take them away. It was the most intense visual experience I've ever had, but it's only recently that I've connected it with my attempts at photographic art.

Over the years since then, I have explored many forms of art, including a period of several years working with large format cameras and the classical darkroom processes. About three years ago I saw a fire performance and became fascinated with light-writing the moving flames of the poi spinners. And the even more colorful images made when colored lights are used instead of flames. I also became interested in trying it out myself, but found the spinning too much. However, as a fencer of many years, the idea of flaming swords appealed strongly to me and I built both flame and light swords.

At my first public performance, at Lizzie West's Howloween ball here in Columbia, Missouri, I danced with the fire swords outside and when we moved inside, I changed over to the light swords and found myself on the other side of the lens. The photographer was Peter Anger. I had noticed him taking the pictures. Unlike the other folks clicking away, he did not use a flash. He had a mono pod, but he didn't plant it and take a time exposure like I would have. He picked it up and danced with it, moving the camera, as I later learned, during the exposure. He came over and showed me the little image in the LCD, quite excited about what my light swords produced. One thing led to another and after several joint studio sessions and much discussion and further work, we have the collaborative body of work on display here.

The idea of moving the camera while making the exposure had never occurred to me until that night. But I soon began to work with that concept. Freeing myself from the tripod has resulted in some fascinating portraits. Pure light designs created by a person moving the lights have got to be some of the most fascinating portraits one can make.

Moving the camera while the model is moving the lights and the camera is capturing the light creates something that moves writing with light into a new dimension. Moving into light painting is feeling your way through the camera into the light, seeking the expanse of time when everything comes together. Sometimes I know that the the moment of magic has occurred as soon as I’ve made the exposure. Other times the magic eludes me, and hides among the other frames of the shoot, waiting for me. That’s the magic of light painting, it will be there when you find it. The light knows.

Brandon Smith
18 August 2007

cyberspace self

2012-01-20T22:24:00.000-08:00

Introduction to my cyber self

My web world presence is a distillation of my life, where I want to share with you, my dear reader, the things I find interesting, enlightening and perhaps insightful. I offer you images and words which I hope will enhance your joy at being alive in this most interesting time of evolution through a technological age to something more.

For most of my life, I have been a "jack of all trades, master of none." But in fact, over the years I have studied and practiced a few skills enough to be more than an apprentice:

Visual

I've been in and out of photography as daily passion several times in my life. This current digital phase is so far the most rewarding period in that craft as I build my skills and create images and prints I feel are worthy of offering for sale. The primary web home for my images is redwoodtwig.com This is currently a somewhat organized but much too large collection of images I've made in the past 7 or 8 years.

I am imposing some order and structure to the kinds of images I like to create:

Landscapes and still lifes bring their own technical challenges, and frankly require much larger format cameras than I am currently using. Digital photography does offer some great new tools or toys as my collection of panoramas at gigapan shows.

Street and event photography includes many photos that are more of interest to the participants than anyone else. Many of these find their way to my facebook profile and page, since in many cases I actually know some of the people in the image. I do not "cover" events like a journalist, or an "official" photographer , nor do I do weddings. Instead I do some reportage type photos, but mostly I look for scenes that illuminate life.

Portraiture is another area I very much enjoy, and one area where I feel my skill level is up to taking paid commissions. A model who wants a specific look, or something other than the normal glamour type poses may find my work appealing.

I also enjoy making abstract images where the basic image is something I have captured with my camera. Sometimes this is only a pattern of light that I set up the camera to see, sometimes it is a manipulation of a "regular" photo that talks to me and says "abstract my essence."

Although some of my images in each of the above areas approach and may even be art worthy of hanging on a wall, it is in the arena of figure and light where I find my most creative and artistic work. Unfortunately, due to culture we live in, most of these images have to reside behind an 18+ wall.

The Tenth Muse, a blog about art, photography and philosophy.

Somewhere between dance, music, words, photographs, videos and the computer there is a new medium emerging. There is a fantastic amount of creative things happening.

Sometimes I wonder if the pace is too fast, sometimes I think the pace is too slow. The tenth muse moves at her own pace, sometimes stately with pomp and circumstance, sometimes quietly, almost totally unnoticed, sometimes swiftly with great exuberance.

No matter what roles I play in life, I strive to play each role in harmony with the earth and all the assorted peoples, animals and plants I share it with.

Tai Chi and Chi Kung

I have been recording my thoughts about how to best take advantage of this Chinese contribution to our global culture. I have only been learning and teaching Tai Chi Chuan for about 30 years. I will confess that I don't do what I exhort my students to do -- at least 10 minutes every day. On average, these past 30 years, I have probably only done a tai chi form only 4 or 5 times a week. Usually one of those times I do get after it for an hour or more. My availability in that area is on the info part of my face book tai chi page.

Fencing is a sport that appeals to me strongly and in which I feel I can teach a firm basic foundation. I lack the killer instinct required to get to the upper levels of the sport. My coach used to exhort me "Be like a tiger!" Nonetheless, I can at least follow the action and see what's going on.

Memoirs

My mother, not long before she passed, yet again told me to get to writing about our life in Indonesia and Thailand. We moved to Djakarta, Indonesia in 1956 and I came back to California in 1964 to go to college. Rather than a straight line autobiography, I'm opting for a memoir.

Philosophy

However, it is difficult for me to write about life or art without bringing in some thoughts that percolate up from my college years when I got a Bachelor of arts degree in philosophy. I hope you will indulge me the somewhat complex things I sometimes say. Please do not hesitate to comment or question any one of my statements in any of my blogs.

Computer technology

Although I did build a working 4 bit computer back in the transistor days, my preference has always been on the software side, not the hardware. Mostly self-taught, I have been writing computer code for programs that have been used in daily operations at many locations. Most have been replaced by other programs as technology improves and better software can be built. And as users get a better and better understanding of what software can do for them, code can be written that better and better supports their decision making. I have a grasp of what it takes to build well constructed software solutions and have both studied and participated in several management methodologies.

Writing code or analyzing a software project is what I do for daily bread, and have been doing for close on to the same 30 years I've been doing Tai Chi Chuan. But for every minute of Tai Chi, there has probably been an hour of computer software related thinking and writing.

You won't see much of my computer related work on the web as the vast majority of it I do through my current employer, Rose International. The work I do there is focused on a particular project or problem and the solution is delivered to the client not to the public, though in several cases, the end product is something the public can see. If you are interested in hiring my computer skills, contact me for details.

Poetry, fiction and prose

I published technical articles in a couple of computer magazines back in the 90's, and have written light fiction as a newspaper column, perhaps three hundred between a stint in high school and a later stint of writing weekly stuff a dozen years ago. Also, somewhere out there on the web is a short story I published through a website that disappeared long ago. I suppose it still exists in some archive somewhere, but I have no idea where.

Permaculture, fox walking and trees

I love trees, big ones, little ones, ones with needles, ones with leaves, all kinds. I also very much like the idea that it is possible to nurture nature in such a sway that nature will provide a continuous bounty of good things to eat or to use for tools and shelter. I am fortunate enough, and have paid enough dues, to have a place where I can attempt to put the permaculture concept into action. An important corollary to treating a chunk of mother earth with the love and attention permaculture demands is learning how to walk in harmony with nature. Fox walking and the entire arena of being close to and understanding nature is highly important to me.

The Arts at Mount Pleasant non-profit school of the arts is the life project that brings all these things together for me. However, it is intended to in fact be an organization that will do what it says, and for that I must let community form around it and shape it, most likely in ways I have not yet thought of. This is good. My profile is not just about me, it is about what I want to do, and the main thing I want to do is see a community dedicated to creating art in harmony with nature be born and grow up. And become independent with it's own way of creating art in harmony with nature.

I have a dream -- that's the easy part.

Art must co-exist not only with other art, but also with our world of many and diverse cultures.

(This is an imprecise philosophical statement, so will be examined in more detail later.)

Brandon Christopher Smith

Son of Joyce Dalbrooke Yates Smith and Edgar Alvin Smith

Awakening

2012-01-04T21:20:00.000-08:00

I was nine and a half when my family boarded the Pan AM Clipper in San Francisco. I think this was PanAm flight 1, in any case it was the flight that circumnavigated the globe east to west. It was an 18 hour flight to Hawaii back then in 1956. The plane was more like a luxury liner than what now wanders among the clouds. It had a wide aisle and only two seats on each side, seats that reclined almost flat. The top of the cabin, instead of having luggage racks, had bunk beds. There was a bar and observation deck also.

It seemed like the sunset lasted the whole 18 hours, wonderful colors in the clouds the whole time. Unlike this picture I took recently on a cramped flight from St. Louis to Washington, D.C., the clouds were awe-inspiring. More like mountains, huge things reaching way above our flying altitude, and solid looking, as if you could get out and jump on them.

These are the puny clouds of the Midwest,
but the closest I have to
the towers you see flying over the Pacific.

I don’t recall much from landing in Hawaii, nor much from our stop at Wake. I do remember the landing on Guam, though, looking down into the clear water and seeing what must have been stuff left over from World War II. The trip from Guam to Manila, the last of our journey in the huge Pan Am clipper, was another story entirely. About half way there it started to get rough, and there was turbulence for at least 4 hours, probably closer to six. I become very sick. I’d had problems with car sickness before, but car trips could always be stopped for me so I could get solid ground to stand on for a while. But we couldn’t stop.
We did finally land and the plane came to a stop. The airport people wheeled the steps out to the plane and we went down them. As soon as I touched the ground I made a wild dash for the building, holding my mouth. No one bothered me, I’m sure they were smiling and knew exactly what my problem was.
The next thing I clearly remember was that when we got to the hotel and I got to lay down on a bed that wasn’t moving, the noise of the air conditioning sounded so much like that plane that I had to get it turned off to keep from being sick again.

But the next day I was fine, and ready for another plane ride, this one the last leg to our new home in Djarkarta, Indonesia. This was a much smaller plane, though it still had four propellers and was certainly large enough to carry a whole bunch of people. Still only two seats on each side of a wide aisle. But the seats didn’t recline very much and there were no bunk beds overhead, just storage places. On this flight we sat up front and the captain left the door open most of the time. Amazing how many dials and gauges there are in an airplane, I’m still amazed at how much information a pilot processes continuously while flying. Of course, the captain brought us kids up into the cockpit and I got to stand right next to his seat for what seemed like hours as we flew over Borneo — green jungle as far as the eye could see in every direction.

Then, in the distance, I could see a patch of red. “We’re going to land there to get some fuel,” the captain said, “you’ll have to go back to your seat now.” We didn’t get off, thinking back, I don’t think anyone got off or on. But I avidly stared out the window at the red dirt.

When we landed at Djarkarta and I stepped out the door onto the steps, I was stunned by the beauty that surrounded me. My eyes skipped over the pavement to the edges where huge trees surrounded everything. Trees so green and bright it almost hurt. And everywhere there were sparkles, as if diamonds has been tossed hither and yon on top of everything, the trees, the buildings, the baggage carts, everything. It has just rained and not only was the air completely clear, but the sun was reflecting off every surface and every surface was sprinkled with points of bright, scintillating light, like a hundred million diamonds.